The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor

Author Mark Labberton calls
readers to get their hearts right in order to respond to the question, “Who is
my neighbor?” in The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor: Seeing Others
Through the Eyes of Jesus.

Following his 2007 The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s
Call to Justice, Labberton’s most recent “dangerous” installment challenges
readers to reflect on why the heart can become so easily complacent about the
world and its needs.

Labberton—formerly a Presbyterian
pastor and now a senior fellow of the International Justice Mission, Lloyd John
Ogilvie chair for preaching and director of the Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute
for Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary—encourages readers, first of all,
to see rightly—the beginning of how our hearts are changed.

“Though we cannot readily or
finally change ourselves, we can make choices, opening ourselves to the changed
heart God wants us to experience,” Labberton said. “The inner, personal work of
the grace of Jesus Christ is meant to show itself in the public lives of those
who are Christ’s disciples.” 

As one who daily makes an effort
to improve himself, Labberton recognizes he has a long way to go. “The happy
world of me is just beginning to awaken to the empathy and compassion, justice
and love for which I have been made,” he said. “I am not where I want to be.
But I am also not where I was.”

He encourages readers not to “run
through” his book; in fact, he says, doing so may lead to discouragement
because it’s too much all at once. But he recommends reading it one chapter
over several days to more fully absorb it.

The book’s content is “dangerous”
for good reason. “It’s dangerous to our selfish absorption,” Labberton said. “I
know—I write this book because I must face this danger to gain more of the
heart of Jesus.”

Our hearts can be disconnected
from those in need, thwarting God’s purposes in the world, Labberton asserts. “The
One who made us for a loving and just relationship with God, with ourselves,
and with one another also gave us the freedom not to love,” he writes. “Many of
us think we are simply choosing to live in between the two options, passively
letting the pieces fall where they will. But the net result when good people do
nothing is that injustice thrives.”

The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor aims to help believers consider the condition of their
hearts.

“I hope this book reaches deeply
into our interior lives, not primarily for our sake, but for the public and
personal welfare of others around us and throughout the world,” he writes. “It
provides a chance to reflect on why our ordinary hearts can be such a seedbed
for injustice, why we can know about injustice but be so complacent about it,
and how this can change.”

Easy to read in brief sections,
the book includes biblical texts for meditation and a group discussion guide.

Click here to purchase this book.